- [first lines]
- King Lear: Know that we have divided In three our kingdom: and 'tis our fast intent To shake all cares and business from our age; Conferring them on younger strengths, while we Unburthen'd crawl toward death.
- Gloucester: These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend no good to us: in cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in palaces, treason; and the bond cracked between child and father. We have seen the best of our time: machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our graves.
- Regan: I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve him truly that will put me in trust: to love him that is honest; to converse with him that is wise, and says little; to fear judgment; to fight when I cannot choose; and to eat no fish.
- Fool: Nuncle, The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long, That it's had it head bit off by it's young. So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.
- Goneril: Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires; As men so disorder'd, so debosh'd and bold, That this our court, infected with their manners, Shows like a riotous inn: epicurism and lust, Makes it more like a tavern or a brothel, Than a graced palace.
- Edgar: When we are sick in fortune, we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as if we were drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by planetary influence.
- Edmund: My father coupled with my mother under the dragon's tail; and I was born under Ursa major; so that it follows, that I am rough and lecherous. I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.
- Fool: All that follow their nose are led by their eyes but blind men; and there's not a nose among twenty but can smell him that's stinking.
- Fool: When a wise man gives thee better counsel, give me mine again: I would have none but knaves follow it, since a fool gives it.
- King Lear: Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout Till you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks! You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder, Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world! Crack nature's moulds, an germens spill at once, That make ingrateful man!
- King Lear: Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain! Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters: I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, You owe me no subscription: then let fall, Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.
- Fool: [singing] He that has and a little tiny wit - With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, - Must make content with his fortunes fit, For the rain it raineth every day.
- King Lear: What hast thou been?
- Edgar: A serving-man, proud in heart and mind; that curled my hair; wore gloves in my cap; served the lust of my mistress' heart, and did the act of darkness with her; swore as many oaths as I spake words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven: one that slept in the contriving of lust, and waked to do it: wine loved I deeply, dice dearly: and in woman out-paramoured the Turk: false of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey!
- Edgar: Child Rowland to the dark tower came, His word was still, - Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man.
- Regan: Ingrateful fox!
- Cornwall: O filthy traitor!
- Gloucester: What mean your graces? Good my friends, consider, You are my guests.
- Goneril: O, the difference of man and man! To thee a woman's services are due: A fool usurps my bed.
- Edgar: Come on, sir; here's the place. Stand still! How fearful, And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air, Show scarce so gross as beetles.
- Gloucester: The trick of that voice I do well remember: Is 't not the king?
- King Lear: Ay, every inch a king: When I do stare, see how the subject quakes. I pardon that man's life. What was thy cause? Adultery? Thou shalt not die: die for adultery! No: The wren goes to 't, and the small gilded fly, Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive!
- King Lear: Why dost thou lash that whore? Strip thine own back; Thou hotly lust'st to use her in that kind, For which thou whipp'st her.
- Regan: Now, sweet lord, Tell me - but truly - but then speak the truth, Do you not love my sister?
- Edmund: In honour'd love.
- Regan: But have you never found my brother's way, To the forfended place?
- Edmund: That thought abuses you.
- Regan: I never shall endure her: dear my lord, Be not familiar with her.